Welcome to the blog of the Tasmanian branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia!

Sunday, 1 February 2015

In Praise of Nonsense

Ten years ago (it shocks me
that it was really that long!) Telstra had a very clever little advertisement
that they used to use to plug their burgeoning broadband service. The ad
featured a little boy in the back of the car completing his homework.

“Dad?” he asked his father.
“Why did they build the Great Wall of China?”

The father at the wheel,
visibly panicking, refuses to appear ignorant in front of his son.

“Oh. That was during the
time of...errr… Emperor Nasi Goreng, and it was to keep the rabbits out.”

The boy happily records the
answer in his book, and we are treated to a close up shot of him in front of
the classroom, ready to give his report on China. He is, we realise, about to
make an utter fool of himself. The message of the commercial is simple: take
the pressure off yourself and get the internet, because the internet has the right
answers. Making things up is bad.

I for one lament this
obsession with empirical facts. When I was in high school I memorised Lewis
Carroll’s fabulous poem, “Jabberwocky,” and it is one of the few things I can
still remember with great clarity. Like Alice, I knew roughly what the poem was
about, though not specifically what time “brillig” was, or what it meant to
“gimble,” or even what a “jabberwocky” might look like (though plenty of films
have come along and tried to fill my mind with their own versions of it now).
Could you even write a book like Alice in Wonderland now and get it
published? Would anyone even think to? Writers from Seuss to Shakespeare have
gleefully made up words with abandon, yet I’ve been prone to argue over whether
something is a “real” word before I accept it’s usage. And what is a “real”
word, anyway? It seems to me that sometimes nonsense can be better than
believability, because nonsense opens up our imagination. It leaves blank
spaces for our minds to feel with beautiful images. In nonsense, we can dream.

I have had wonderful
eccentric teachers who have convinced their students that they are the
grandchild of Tutankhamun discoverer Howard Carter, or a witch who would love
to take her young friends for a ride on her broomstick, if only they would wake
when she visits them in the night! (They are always so disappointed.) Most of
us have grown up with grandparents who enthralled us with stories that
stretched our disbelief to its very limits. But didn’t we love them just the
same? Didn’t we love silliness? Didn’t we want to believe, even if we knew in
our hearts that it couldn’t be true?

So
call this, if you will, in praise of nonsense. A call to nonsense. Let us make
up words and tell far-fetched stories. Let us tell of the trees that spoke to
us and told us their secrets, and the quenzifinas and the tantalopians that can
sometimes be spotted racing like shooting stars in the shadows of the moon. Let
us - just for the hell of it - imagine what might have happened if an emperor
called Nasi Goreng built an enormous fence in China to keep the rabbits out.

In
the modern world, the truth is easier to find than ever. Just for a moment,
let’s embrace the wonder of a well told lie.

1 comment:

Thoroughly agree with you Lyndon. There's always room for a little silliness and great imagination - it helps us think 'outside the square' and be more flexible. When i was a child i thought revolting or vulgar or repulsive just didn't cut it to describe something truly gross, so I came up with 'repulgar'. I was so proud of myself and was convinced it would catch on!!Jane - from your 'adopt an author' school :-)

About Me

The Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) is a volunteer run, not for profit, organisation that was established in 1945 and is comprised of branches of individual members who are passionate about children's and young adult literature. This is the blog of their Tasmanian branch.